Tricky TamponContract: Pretend like you have inserted a tampon. Hold the imaginary tampon in place with your pelvic muscles, while visualizing a hand pulling the string down. The muscles will naturally pull up to stop the tampon from being pulled out.Relax: Now relax your muscles and pretend like you are pulling the tampon out.

Blooming FlowerContract: Pretend like your vagina is a flower, the petals closing in on themselves.Relax: The flower blooms open.

The Bean[2]Contract: Pretend like you are picking up a small bean with your vagina.Relax: Now set the bean back down.

Blueberries for V[3]Contract: Pick up two blueberries, one in the anus and one in the vagina. Without crushing them, pull them into your body.Relax: Gently lower the blueberries out of your body, again without crushing them.

Vagina Polka[4]Contract: Pretend the tailbone and pubic bone are two ends of an accordion. Play the accordion by squeezing the two ends together (without tilting your pelvis).Relax: The accordion opens back up and the two ends move away from each other.

Not Your Average Smoothie

*This cue often works best by reversing your breathing (i.e. this time breathe in on the contract image and breathe out on the relax image).

Contract: Imagine a straw running through your vagina to a smoothie that you are sitting in. Suck on the straw and pull that smoothie up through your body.Relax: Let go of the straw and let the smoothie ooze back out of your body.

X Marks the Spot[5]Contract: The center of the X is your perineum. Pretend like you are pulling all four points of the X into its center, and then lift the compressed X as if it is a platform.Relax: Lower the platform and release each end of the X.

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First NameE-Mail Address

Hi. I’m Meredith.

Pregnancy and childbirth crushed my body like a wrecking ball... three times in a row. I've been putting the pieces back together ever since and started Motherfigure to help with the reconstruction.

But I’m no life coach. I’m a mom who delights in compulsive reading and research, who adores “experts” but also questions them, and who thinks maternal bodies occupy a strange space in our culture, in our history, and in our minds.

Oh, and despite that grandiose introduction, I prefer funny over saccharine, with the exception of my chocolate. I like that humorless and sweet.

Comments

An exercise instructor many years ago taught us to pretend that very precious tiny people were boarding an elevator in our vaginas on the first floor. We slowly raised that elevator and its special passengers to the second floor, then the third, fourth, and fifth floors. We lowered floor by floor as well, releasing completely back on the first. It has continued to be a helpful technique.